Coupling Coordination Degree between Ecological Environment Quality and Urban Development in Chengdu–Chongqing Economic Circle Based on the Google Earth Engine Platform

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Herein, some suggestions and issues need to be addressed:

In the introduction the GEE cloud platform and its advantages must be highlighted. For instance, the rise of cloud-processing systems, for instance Google Earth Engine (GEE), providing free of charge access to EO datasets worldwide. GEE, like other cloud computing platforms, are very popular because they provide efficient methods for storing, accessing, and analyzing datasets on high-performance servers. GEE was launched by Google in 2010 and makes freely available remote sensing datasets via its internet-based Python Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and a JavaScript web-based Interactive Development Environment (IDE) (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2017.06.031).  To that end, recent studies applied GEE in several environmental issues such as erosion monitoring (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2022.106564), wildfire mapping (https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14030672), land cover change (https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14091977) ect.

Highlight the research gap addressed by this study.

Figure 1. Please increase the labels. Also, add a basemap as backround in the figure.  

Figure 2. Add the database upper the MODIS products.

Are available demographic  data to link or compare population changes with landcover changes?

Figure 5. The y-axis is not readable.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Title: coupling between ... this expression is not right, suggest you change to coupling coordination degree.

Line 42: add relevant reference after "in the world". 

Line 49-52: what is relevant introduction about remote sensing application in eco-environmental quality assessment. In this field, fruitful achievements had made. Authous need add necessary parts. 

Line 57-59: same problems to line 49-52, what is limitations and state-of-art of urbanization assessment. Based on statistical data or remote sensing data? What is the advantages of nightlight time? existing describtion is too vague.

Introduction: what is the study purpose? what is the research question? in the last paragraph of introduction, you must add these parts.

Figure 1: it is not appropriate to draw study area like this? suggest you add a figure to directly show the name of each city in figure, then the entire China map can be treated as a mini map in the right or left corner. In addition, it is not appropriate to list all cities name in the caption of figure 1.

In methods part, how do you get the urbanization level index, just directly use nightlight data? How do you consider these problems of nightlight data? What are your processing steps? 

Figure 5: the circle in these figures are too poor, please change another showing type.

Section 5: divide dicussion and conclusion into separate parts, discussion should include the limitations and implications, further study, validation parts.

Your references included too many chinese references, suggest you cite numerous international studies.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper examines an interesting topic, but the novelty of the subject is exclusively related to the provision of data from a specific area in China, and the findings of the study in my opinion, it is difficult to generalize due to the specific impact of this case study. Even if the used methodologies create a useful framework for the study of coupling between the quality of the ecological environment and the level of urban development generally. Also, the study does not present the object of study in comparison to similar cases internationally.

1.      In the Abstract, which is quite detailed in terms of results and extensive, does not clearly present the purpose of the research. It is necessary for the Abstract to be more clear, more focused, and briefer.

2.      The Introduction section is brief and did not present the whole frame of the studied subject. Also, the purpose of the study does not present clearly.  Missing the contribution and the originality of the research from this section and finally, it would also be good for authors to give a short structure of the manuscript at the end of the Introduction section.

3.      Please analyze the sentence between lines 57-60. An argument presentation is necessary.

4.      Please in subsection 2.1 present the population changes in the study areas in the last decades, the population density in the urban areas, employment per economic sector, and the main economic activities in the study area also.

5.      Please enrich subsection 2.2 with citations or arguments.

6.      The presentation of the results is quite complex and makes the manuscript not easily readable. There are points in the Results section that belongs in the Discussion section and others that belong to methodology.

7.      The Discussion section is limited in content. The authors present repetitions from previous sections and there is no comparison of research findings with results from similar studies internationally oriented.

8.      Also, in the Conclusion section there are repetitions that we met in the previous sections. Missing proposals for policy implementation or connection of findings with relevant policies. The authors do not present the contribution of the paper and its novelty.

9.      There are no research limitations and future research.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors have addressed all my concerns.

Reviewer 3 Report

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